


To Come Home, To Be Brave

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 17:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8676445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: Obi-Wan plans to spend the holiday alone, and Qui-Gon disagrees.  Unnecessary prequel to Home Is Wherever I'm With You.





	

Qui-Gon rapped his fist lightly against the soft pine door.  “May I come in?"

As a resident faculty member at Coruscant Academy, he was technically not required to give advance notice before entering student rooms, but he generally preferred not to exercise this privilege, as long as he didn't smell burning carpet or hear any troubling sizzles or pops.  (The year Quinlan Vos had smuggled in an entire crate of Roman candles and distributed them among his dormmates had probably aged Qui-Gon a good five years, although he had come to appreciate his charge's irrepressible and entrepreneurial spirit.)  There was an almost suspicious quiet on the other side of this door, absent raised voices or a recklessly high volume on a prohibited TV, but given the grade-point average of the student in question, perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised.  

But then, on the morning of Thanksgiving, when every room in the dorm, save this one, was empty, Qui-Gon had perhaps not been expecting a display of the most disciplined of study habits.  

There was a small noise, something that might have been a sigh of resignation, and then the dutiful, “Come in.”

All CA dorms were small; apparently parents didn’t mind their hefty tuition payments funding locally-sourced produce in the dining halls and scrupulously maintained hedges lining the walkways of campus, instead of ostensibly character-building living arrangements.  (Qui-Gon had always suspected Headmaster Palpatine of skimming a little off the top, himself.)  The single bed was placed by the lone window;  the wooden dresser, battered by decades of careless adolescent abuse, hugged the wall perpendicular, its top nearly bare, its drawers neatly shut, without even a sweatshirt sleeve or stray pair of socks hanging loose.  

(The square footage of Qui-Gon’s own quarters, a faculty apartment on the top floor of the dorm, was barely larger, but it would have been unrecognizable to Obi-Wan, crammed floor to ceiling with the personality of its current occupant.  Books double-lined shelves, were left open for weeks on any available surface; plants filled every open space, green leaves twining up around the crown molding and spilling, unchecked, across the floor, requiring Qui-Gon to walk a meandering and inconvenient path to avoid treading on tender shoots.  It all probably violated some kind of code, written or otherwise; until Palpatine deigned to listen to his repeated complaints about the reliability of the wi-fi, Qui-Gon wasn’t going to concern himself about it.)  

Obi-Wan was, as Qui-Gon had feared, seated at his desk, in front of what appeared to be a mountain of books and meticulously color-coded notecards.  More troublingly, he was dressed strictly to CA dress code (white collared shirt, white sweater, starched khakis, and polished shoes) despite the fact that with the campus nearly empty for the holiday, there was no one to hand out demerits for improper attire.  (Qui-Gon’s longer hair had garnered raised eyebrows from a few fellow teachers and an email from Palpatine to all faculty members on “setting a positive example of the importance of personal grooming” but Qui-Gon had his own reasons for growing out his hair, and until Palpatine figured out a demerit system for employees, Qui-Gon wasn’t going to bother himself about that, either.)  Obi-Wan, with his blazing blue eyes and neat ginger hair, his milky skin unblemished by even a freckle, could have been on the cover of one of CA’s ubiquitous promotional materials.

And he appeared distinctly unhappy at the prospect of being forced to put up with a teacher on a national holiday.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Obi-Wan," he said calmly.  

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed.  “Happy Thanksgiving,” he repeated uncertainly.  

“It seems to me,” Qui-Gon said, taking a few paces into the room to tower over Obi-Wan’s desk, “that today, a holiday, a non-class day, is too beautiful to waste in this decrepit brick building.”

The eyebrows lifted, the creases on his forehead increasing.  Obi-Wan was going to get wrinkles before his time, Qui-Gon could see that already, unless someone intervened.

“Sir?” Obi-Wan ventured.

“Do you have plans for dinner, Obi-Wan?” Qui-Gon asked mildly.

"I have leftover takeout saved in the fridge, and I was going to catch up on Game of Thrones."  There was almost a shrug, a defensive raising of one shoulder.  “My parents are in Malaysia,” he said, lifting his chin.  “It didn’t seem worth it to spend nineteen hours on a plane each way so I could not be invited to a state dinner.”

“Sounds perfectly reasonable,” Qui-Gon declared, ignoring the clear hint of bitterness in his student’s voice.  “But that’s no reason you should be cooped up in this old place.”

“Sir?” Obi-Wan asked again.

“Obi-Wan, I am taking you home for Thanksgiving,” Qui-Gon informed him.  “And please drop the ‘sir.’”  

* * *

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea, sir,” Obi-Wan repeated, huddled in his coat and scarf (the heating in Qui-Gon’s ancient Prius still worked fine, it just required a few minutes to prepare itself emotionally for the task of blowing hot air at its occupants) as they sped down the highway, the imposing buildings and manicured grounds of CA disappearing into the distance.  “Won’t your family mind an extra person showing up at the last minute?”

“Not my family, my friend Tahl,” Qui-Gon said, ignoring the pang in his chest at the inaccuracy of that distinction.  If there was a single person in this world who still fit that qualification--who ever had--it was the woman to whose home they were currently heading.

But it seemed best not to overwhelm Obi-Wan with details, and so he kept the complexities of whatever he might feel to himself.  If Qui-Gon himself couldn't work out the threads of his relationship with Tahl, the bruised-shin girl he ran through the woods with as a child, the teenager, all wild dark hair and long limbs, he’d met after school, at the library between their two foster homes, day after day, because if Tahl wasn’t giving up on graduating, neither was he…the woman who lived only two hours’ distance away, but whose home he had only visited a handful of times…if he couldn’t quite put a name to what existed between them, it was probably too much to expect of a sixteen-year-old.

“We grew up together,” he added, a succinct set of words that conveyed nothing of sunburned shoulders and fingers stained purple with wild berries, of grass scratching at their backs as they lay under the stars, Qui-Gon always trying, and failing, to describe what Tahl couldn’t see, that didn't touch at all what Qui-Gon felt, just hearing the sound of her voice.

_“Are you coming next week?” Tahl had asked, without bothering to say hello, when he’d picked up the phone eight days ago, stepping off into a more secluded branch of the academic building's hallway when her face had flashed on the screen.  (He’d snapped that shot quickly, almost guiltily, last spring, when she’d been in town for a reading.  Delighted by the excuse to see her, he’d offered to pick her up afterwards and show her around where he lived, only realizing his foolishness when he led her up four flights of stairs to his apartment and realized that there wasn’t actually anything to see, particularly for someone whose sight was limited to the tactile.  She'd picked her way through his small rooms, pausing to graze her fingers across the worn and threadbare blanket covering the holes in his couch, to bury her nose in an overgrown pot of lavender.  She'd stopped, then, turning back to him, a soft smile lighting her face.  "It's you," she'd said, and Qui-Gon hadn't been able to resist capturing the moment, the light from the window behind her casting a warm glow on the deep bronze of her bare shoulders, the quiet tenderness on her face.)_

_"Am I invited?" he countered._

_Tahl sighed.  "Qui-Gon, don't be tiresome. You've been coming to my house for Thanksgiving since the year we warmed sliced turkey on the hot plate in my studio apartment."_

_Qui-Gon coughed, hoping that none of his students happened by during this exchange.  "A fair point."_

_"Well?"  Tahl demanded._

_"I wouldn't miss it," he said, hoping the sincerity of his statement came across in his tone.  "What time are we eating?"_

_"There's no point in telling you, you've never once made it on time," Tahl replied blithely._

_Qui-Gon would have rated his tardiness closer to fifty percent of the time, but Tahl was never wrong._

_“I’ll have you know, I am frequently capable of punctuality,” Qui-Gon argued anyway._

_“Have you recently suffered a head injury?” Tahl inquired._

_The sound Qui-Gon made earned several turned heads from a group passing by, including, he saw with a sinking feeling, Mr. Mundi, the language teacher, who, for some reason, always seemed to have the impression that he was doing something questionable, and possibly dangerous._

_Qui-Gon turned his face—casually—into the wall.  “I have not,” he said, attempting to recover his dignity._

_“Then aim for four, and I’ll see you next week,” Tahl said cheerfully, and hung up, leaving Qui-Gon standing in the hallway, still staring at his phone, wondering what it would take for him to get through a conversation with Tahl with even the smallest shred of pride still intact._

"Oh."  Obi-Wan was briefly silent.  “Will there be other people there?”

Obi-Wan, clearly the child of diplomats, apparently was unused to attending dinners without a dossier each on the participants.  Qui-Gon hid a smile.  

“I don’t know,” he answered.  “It depends on what people’s plans are, who of her other friends are in town.”

He had never been bothered by meeting new people or sharing a meal with strangers.  But if he was being honest with himself, he couldn’t help but crave a smaller crowd…a more intimate setting, perhaps.  It had been a long time, it felt like, since he and Tahl had been alone together.  There was nothing, he knew, to stop him from dropping by some weekend, or calling up, saying he was going to be in the area, suggesting a meal together…and yet he never did.  Another year had passed, and while they spoke often, they were together only rarely.  Was he afraid of what might happen…or that it wouldn’t?  

There were times…just moments…over the years, but more often now, when his hand would reach for hers, instinctively, as they had so many thousands of times before, or the conversation would quiet, and the stillness would feel risky, dangerous, a terrifying heartbeat away from changing everything.  

It felt like they were children again, back on the bank of the Temple's lake, staring down at the deep water, hands joined, afraid to jump, unwilling to go back.  

“I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” Obi-Wan said, clearly unhappy at the prospect.  

“You know, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon reflected, “I think you might be right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from Bleachers.


End file.
